If we pulled an Iraq in North Korea would the results be any better?

Great Debates
1

I’m not actually advocating this, I don’t think the U.S should be in the nation-conquering business, just wondering in a theoretical type way. Say the U.S. and South Korea acting as allies launched a full scale surprise invasion into North Korea and took it over, overthrowing Kim Jong-Un and his military regime. I guess this hypothetical assumes China and Russia just kind of let this happen and maybe just do a little bitching at NATO, do you think they would actually act militarily against this coalition in real force or just commence with a lot of empty threats or posturing?

So assuming we are left unmolested, to freely enact such a plan would the outcome be positive. If we essentially did in North Korea what we did with Iraq would it have an opposite and overall positive outcome? The two countries number fairly close in population but are vastly different culturally. The North Koreans don’t seem to have the religious fanaticism or tribalism that Iraq has , although much of the population is brainwashed.

If we were able to assume some full measure of control and rebuild infrastructure similar to say Japan after WWII, do you think the common people would be able to form some type of functioning democracy or possibly reunite with South Korea or would it just be some military general from the old guard waiting to swoop in and take over for himself at the right time after the fact.

2

I think the average North Korean citizen would be more amenable to a South Korean takeover than the Iraqis were of an American takeover. Less of a “foreign invader” perception. So yes, I expect less insurgency.

3

I think that 70 years of the Kim regimes have beaten any rebellion the North Koreans may have had out of them. They’d probably submit to the authority of any invader, because submitting to authority is the only thing they know.

4

East Asia is a lot less volatile region than the Middle East is. If China was willing to sign off on an occupation, then it’s pretty much a done deal. What other powers are going to have an interest in supporting a North Korean insurgency?

I’m assuming the South Koreans have been working on some kind of plans for this eventuality. They must figure it’s a realistic possibility that the Kim regime will self-destruct at some point - there must be some limit to how crazy a regime can be and still serve as a functioning government. So the South Koreans must expect that some day they’ll have to take over the North and rebuild it.

5

Why? People can tolerate a lot more from local strongman than foreigners? And they staid something similar before Iraq.

6

IMHO, authoritative cultures aren’t very good at insurgency. It’s one reason why the Japanese and Germans never resisted their occupations after WW2.

7

The fact that every military aged male was either dead, crippled or impriosned might also have had something to do with it.

8

So you’re saying that all cultures are basically the same? North Koreans are just like Iraqis, who are just like Americans?

9

If the U.S. had done this 10-15 years ago, the war and the ensuing democratization process might have had better chances of success. I think the free world would have thanked America for ridding mankind of an insanely despotic government. Given Russia’s and China’s strengthened positions and planetary ambitions, it would be virtually impossible to pull this off today. The window of opportunity has closed. There may be another favorable moment in fifty years’ time, but I doubt it. The new cold war era we seem to be entering now is the onset of a novel clash between soaring and rising empires.

10

The North Koreans have been taught for seventy years that the Americans and Japanese want to invade and kill them. I don’t know what the result of the invasion would be, but the North Koreans would fight.

11

Nk doesn’t have the ethnic and religious divisions of Iraq so that would help. I have no idea if China would fund an. Insurgency movement.

It’d probably be easier, I would think. After the hard liners had been killed or jailed.

12

Humans tend to be similar. Resisting outside invaders is a fairly common occurrence in history.

13

Resisting invaders, sure. I’m just saying that insurgency - fighting outside the parameters of a regular army - does not come as easy to some nations as it does to others.

14

There might be less of an insurgency, but rebuilding infrastructure and society (and the psyche of the people) would be just as massive a task, I think.

15

There’s very little to rebuild. The vast majority of the people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.

16

In the North, the task would be building up from scratch, yeah. Rebuilding the South after the North’s artillery gets its 15 minutes of fame would be a related matter though.

17

Isn’t there also the small matter of the NK nukes? I think in the event of an invasion, those would be the first thing Kim Jong Un would reach for. Who knows how bad things would get after that, but I think very bad would be an understatement.

18

It isn’t so much that they’ll tolerate more from a local strongman, as it is that the local strongman didn’t just appear out of nowhere. He got to be the local strongman by knowing how to operate successfully in that manner in his own country.

Like it says in the opening number of The Music Man, you’ve gotta know the territory. When we come crashing into a Vietnam or Afghanistan or Iraq, we don’t know the territory, we don’t speak the language, we can’t tell friend from foe, all our ‘boots on the ground’ see is an undifferentiated mass of gooks or towelheads, all of whom feel like threats, and whom we inevitably treat as threats - despite the fact that we’re supposedly there to rescue these people, from Communism or the Taliban or from Saddam Hussein.

Our best bet in Iraq, other than far and away the best option of not invading in the first place, was to leave the military intact, put one of Saddam’s top generals in charge the moment we got to Baghdad, and get out while the getting was good.

Hell, any plan for the aftermath would have been better than no plan, which is what we had. Thank you, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld. Fucking brilliant.

Now, Korea: obviously the preconditions would have to be that China would be OK with the deal, and South Korea would be ready to rebuild North Korea, and we’d be willing to finance that rebuilding.

Would it work better? Hell, it couldn’t work worse. And while I’m a firm believer in the Hobbesian notion that even a ruthless ruler is almost always better than chaos, there comes a point where that’s no longer true, and it’s hard to imagine that life could get much worse for North Koreans than it is under Kim Jong-Un.

If we were able to quickly disarm the North Korean military, the South Koreans could come in with food and blankets and generators, and an ability to converse with the North Koreans in their common language. They’d have a much better chance of being ‘welcomed as liberators’ than we were in Iraq. I’m not sure the North Koreans would have the energy for an insurgency anyway, given the way their country exists practically on the edge of starvation.

19

It would be worse, IMHO, in every conceivable way than Iraq was.

Ok, so let’s say this happened and the US and South Korea invaded North Korea and China and Russia stood by and allowed it (pretty unlikely, but ok). Almost immediately South Korea (and probably Japan whether they helped or not) would start getting hit massive amounts of ordnance (I’m not even going to go into the nuclear nightmare…just keeping it conventional). Before we could surpress them, the North Koreans could, at a minimum, basically wipe out Seoul and probably kill thousands if not 10’s of thousands of civilians. This doesn’t count the probably heavy casualties the US and South Korean military forces would be taking in a forced entry assault on one of the most heavily defended borders on earth, or the REALLY heavy casualties that North Koreans would be taking, both military and civilian during this time period…and this is just the initial fighting. The REAL killer (assuming nukes don’t raise their ugly head) is that almost immediately the North Korean logistics and supply infrastructure would completely collapse, especially for the civilians, which means in a fairly short time you’d have famine and disease going through the civilian population…and all of this happening during a full out shooting war. On the Korean peninsula. Which just happens to be near some of the busiest trade routes. And, of course, you’d have millions of starving people trying to flee the fighting…probably right into China, which is going to put a huge burden on them (and probably cause even more causalities).

After the fighting (figure a few weeks to several months, minimum…really, until you figure out where Lil Kimmy III is hiding and blast him and his inner circle), you will have a humanitarian crisis on your hands the likes of which has never been seen as far as I know. Just keeping folks alive is going to be a huge issue, since North Korea’s infrastructure before the fighting isn’t what one would call robust…and to win, we would have to smash it. Then there is the fact that the country is decades behind and will probably have to be rebuilt from scratch and that the people are half starved at the best of times, and have been indoctrinated for all their lives.

The difference is that the major deaths and destruction would be front loaded, so to speak, instead of back loaded. I don’t see a multi-year insurgency happening in North Korea, as I doubt very many of it’s neighbors would be keen on supporting it. You aren’t going to get insurgents coming from many other nations to fight either. The real back loaded issues will be trying to rebuild the country, keep people alive and slowly remove the indoctrination. The initial invasion, however, is going to kill a LOT more people than our invasion of Iraq did…and on both sides this time. No way would South Korea get out of this without taking major losses on the civilian side, and Japan would probably get hit as well, though not as bad (unless they use nukes). And casualties on the military side would be heavy for all sides involved, but the North Koreans would probably take staggering losses before they quit.

It would be nothing remotely like Iraq.

20

Fact is, North Koreans live in artifical lifes that are created by other people. They say when to clap when to laugh, it’s normal to do such things in a group like that. Everything in north korea is about the social norm. Imagine being anti-social or having any type of rejection to unknown people, being in north korea would be a paradise, you wouldn’t have to worry about looking odd or being left out. North Korea is really good about getting it’s people out there, they don’t leave anyone behind in that sense.

Pulling an “iraq” on north korea definetly will work and probably is even a good idea. But these people aren’t going to fillingly or automatically fit into South Korean life style change. Having the south govern over the north will be a big issue, expecially with the modern technology being implemented on a mass scale. People will be extremely ignorant of how to use such things. I feel North Koreans under South Korean rule will end up causing many to kill them selfs due to not being able to adjust to the social norms of south korean and I bet some will even stay loyal to their former god. Of course most will eventually get out of this reality and fall into place with the rest of society and there is already much exposure to the rich world for many north koreans today.

North Korea will be free of the supreme loser duo at the end of this one’s life span. He’ll probably adopt a child which would be a highly scouted out political / economic student who’s been exposed to western culture and how business works, free markets, that kind of stuff. In this situation that kid will be seen as an insignificant supreme leader by a vast majority, also that kid will have his own perspective on reality and one that is much more crediable than the average north korean. So perhaps even in this turn of events north korea will still end up becoming ‘free’, or at least of their custom secondary economy for the “rich”.